The invention relates to shaving systems having handles and replaceable cartridges.
Shaving systems often consist of a handle and a replaceable cartridge in which one or more blades are mounted in a plastic housing. After the blades in a cartridge have become dull from use, the cartridge is discarded, and replaced on the handle with a new cartridge.
“Cartridge-type” shaving systems, using a variety of proprietary connection schemes to affix the cartridge to the handle, have become popular. This is partially driven by a razor manufacturer's desire to have a proprietary connection, thereby encouraging repeat purchases. The connection scheme allows the consumer to easily, repeatedly, efficiently and intuitively load and remove the new and used cartridges from the handle and provides the necessary retention forces to maintain the integrity of the handle-to-cartridge attachment during shaving.
The connection scheme must be robust enough to provide the necessary retention forces to maintain the integrity of the handle-to-cartridge attachment during shaving. To date the industry has widely embraced complicated mechanical loading and unloading mechanisms and release buttons to try to achieve this objective. There is a need for a simpler, more intuitive and reliable shaving handle-to-cartridge connection method.